The monarch butterfly nursery

A little while ago, Fiona Parker interviewed Ellen Reid from St Arnaud, who raises butterflies of various kinds. After releasing 500 monarch butterflies into her garden, Ellen ended up with around a thousand monarch caterpillars.

It turns out that monarch caterpillars are quite picky and will only eat swanbush (also called milkweed) and, with a thousand caterpillars, Ellen needed enough milkweed to feed them.

The appeal for swanbush worked, and Ellen had enough to feed her horde of hungry caterpillars.

She brought nine of the pupae into the station and we've been fascinated by them.

Four have hatched so far. The first batch - named them Alpha, Bravo and Charlie - hatched on the 18th of March. When their wings fully inflated and dried, we released them into the wild (that is, a flowering bush in the front yard).

The next day, Delta hatched. We tried to take him outside as carefully as we had the first three, but he got a sniff of fresh air and flew off the moment the door was open.

The remaining pupae went home with a staff member: some to home, and some to a local classroom.

Echo, the fifth monarch, has hatched, and six-year old Nathan Broad had a great reaction to the new arrival.